Gray Ambitions

A/N: This takes place during the summer of OotP, but totally goes AU after the fact Harry is there and it's hot. After that, it takes off in an entirely different direction. I'm going to keep going with this one, at least a few chapters anyway?

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry potter, and don't make any money here.

Warning: Noncon, scenes of graphic child abuse and neglect. Future Lemons.

Not sure on the pairing. Already doing Drarry, but not sure whether I want Snarry yet, or perhaps LuciusXHarry. Still contemplating.

Chapter One

Draco's Discovery

For someone just returned to life, the dark lord was sure pushy with the orders, Draco Malfoy thought absently as he walked down a street called Privet Drive. He wore a glamour, so to anyone else he looked like just another Muggle. Supposedly, the great dark lord was worried about Potter. Something about him being susceptible to the influence of the light. Oh well. So he was supposed to monitor his house, discreetly of course. He came upon a woman standing in her yard, shaking her head. He glanced at her.

"Evening," he said, then heard something crash in the next house. The woman flinched. "What's going on there?" he asked, innocently.

She shook he head. "Nothing anyone will stop, or they would have done it years ago," she said, and moved into her house, leaving Draco very confused.

He looked at the number, four, and heard yelling of some sort and then it got very quiet. He shook his head and walked past it, glancing in the window to see a family sitting down to dinner, a very fat man, a fat boy and a woman with a donkey looking face. Wait, wasn't this supposed to be where Potter lived? He felt the blood wards pulsating against the house, but something was wrong with them. It was like they were flickering. He watched for a minute, and never saw his quarry. He'd just have to come back tomorrow again, he guessed.

He wandered back to the house he was using, warded and sealed, of course, and slept away the night, waking the next morning for a new disguise. While he was on this horrid detail, he had to at least amuse himself by using different disguises each day after all. This place was really boring. He found a park, though, and sat there for a long time, and eventually, he spotted his quarry, after lunch. He smirked beneath the tree he sat in and waited. However, that smirk faded into a look of confusion as he saw him, his clothes were horrible, raggedy, even, a t-shirt so much too big that the sleeves rested halfway down his forearms, and sweatpants that hung on him that had been roughly cut off with a pair of scissors or a knife. He couldn't miss the limp as he went past, completely oblivious to Draco's place in the shade.

Harry was tired. Really tired. And now he was pretty sure his wrist was sprained, or possibly broken. Dammit, if he could use magic, this wouldn't be a problem. But no, he couldn't use magic yet, and his uncle knew it. And he was taking every chance to remind him how much smaller and weaker he was than the brutish man. He sat down on the swing, rubbing his wrist, seeing it was already turning purplish. His wand, like all his things, was locked away. He sighed and swung back and forth, keeping the injured wrist against his belly. He winced as he dropped when he pressed too hard on his left foot. He was pretty sure he had a bone somewhere in his hip or upper thigh that was cracked. It was just after lunch. He could sit here for a while before he had to go make dinner. They didn't care where he went as long as his chores were done. The list hadn't been long today because they were going out to celebrate something for Dudley's school. He laid his head against the cool chain and sighed, slipping into sleep, the soft motion of the swing lulling him.

Sometime later he awoke with a start, almost falling out of the swing. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, yelping when he tried to do so with the injured arm. He scowled at it and then looked up. The sun was way too far into the west.

"Fuck," he almost yelled, leaping, or trying to leap, out of the swing, falling instead, and landing awkwardly on the already injured side. He groaned and struggled up to his feet and ran. "Fuck, I'm so dead, so fucking dead," he cried out hoarsely, nearly face planting as his hip twisted painfully, not noticing the boy sitting next to the tree as he ran.

Draco frowned and stood to follow his nemesis. What the hell? First weird thing, he'd watched him fall asleep not only sitting up, but in a swing. And sleep almost six hours like that. He was glad he'd brought a book and a candy bar by the time he woke up. He was fast too, so Draco ran to keep up. He stopped at the treeline across the road from number four and watched as Harry stopped at the head of the sidewalk, seeing the car and then looking up as the fat muggle opened the door.

"You too good to make dinner, freak?" the man scowled, and had Draco not been as close as he was he wouldn't have heard it.

"No, I fell asleep, I'll…" before he could finish the man reached out and grabbed him by the wrist, which brought him to his knees with a cry of obvious pain. "Don't, I can't…if you don't…"

The man looked around to see if there was anyone around and to Draco's surprise, used his other hand to punch hard across Harry's face, snapping his head to the side hard, blood spraying out over the sidewalk. He then hauled him up and threw him into the house behind him, catching his shoulder on the frame and sending him sprawling inside. The door slammed shut and he heard another cry, then a scream of the like he hadn't heard come out of someone not being tortured. He moved to where he could see somewhat, and he just caught the sight of the fat beast dragging, literally dragging, him up the stairs by his hair while he weakly tried to get to his feet behind him.

Draco didn't know what to think. What the hell was going on? He ran back to his assigned house and tossed the floo powder in the fireplace, calling out "Malfoy Manor." He brushed off the dust and stepped out into the room and found his father in the sitting room.

"Son, aren't you supposed to be on duty right now? You've not been relieved," he said, looking over his son, slightly annoyed that after two days he was already disobeying orders.

"Father, I am, but there's something you should see. I don't know if you want to do something, but read my memory, I can't describe it. Watch for yourself," he said, moving forward while his father cast the spell to see what Draco was talking about.
Lucius pulled his hands back and stared at Draco. "This is how they treat their savior? The boy who is supposed to be strong enough to defeat our dark lord?" he muttered. "You go back, I'll contact you shortly. Stay close to him. The dark lord doesn't want him dead. Don't use magic; we don't want the tracers to activate."

Draco headed back to the place, walking quickly to the place he'd hidden before in the tree line. Through the window, he could see the fat muggles eating, but there was no sign of Harry. He grabbed the invisibility potion from his pouch and drank it, it wouldn't last long, but it was enough for him to circle the house. He made his way around toward the back and he saw the snowy owl he knew belonged to Harry chasing a mouse. The fat muggle came out the back door and noticed the bird and picked up rocks and started chucking them at Hedwig, who took off immediately to sit on the roof.

"Stay away, freak bird, or I'll wring your neck!" he yelled, and Hedwig stepped away from the edge.

He kept moving and heard a noise, like soft wheezing sound and an occasional whimper of obvious pain. He looked up to realize that there was only one window that was barred, and he could see slender fingers wrapped around one of them, pale against the black metal. They tapped a delicate rhythm, and Hedwig hopped down and stood on top of the bars, and shaking hands tied something to her foot. He barely heard the whispered, "Take it to someone, anyone, girl…please…doesn't matter who…" The hands disappeared and Hedwig took off for a moment then drifted down to land in front of Draco's invisible feet. He knelt down and ran a hand over the beautiful bird and picked up the paper that had been placed on her foot.

She flew after him as he headed back to the treeline just before the potion faded completely and opened a small paper marred with ink or something. A jaunty, jagged message was written there.

"I'll miss everyone, and I'm so sorry I wasn't good enough in the end, HP," it read simply. He turned it over in the light and realized that it wasn't ink at all, but smears and drops of blood that covered the tiny paper.

Draco put it in his pocket and went to his position across the street and waited, like his father had said until he heard to pop of an apparition beside him. He looked up to see the familiar blond head of his father.

"Is he inside still?" he asked, apprehensively.

"He's upstairs, in the room with the barred window, he called owl and sent this out," he said, handing his father the paper, and he scowled at it. He supposed that the broken nose he'd seen in the memory could have caused the blood that he was seeing on the small note.

"After the muggles go to sleep, we'll break the wards and get him out for the dark lord," Lucius said with a nod to his son. "I'm sure we'll be rewarded for this, son. Greatly."

They both settled down on the side of the road, and then realized to their amazement less than two hours later, the wards were falling on their own as they sat there, draining slowly of power, something they shouldn't be doing. Draco and Lucius knew that something was extremely wrong with the boy-who-lived. As one, they moved across the street and Lucius cast a silent unlocking charm on the door, which popped with a soft click. They followed the steps and came to a room with several locks on the outside, and inside they could hear something, whispered words and harsh breathing that was almost pants. It was very muffled shout, though that made their moves for them. Lucius carefully undid each lock silently, and the door swung open.

Draco, Malfoy that he was, was rarely out of control. He rarely did stupid things like pass out, or vomit when seeing something like torture. But this made him turn green. The fat man was on top of his rival, who was gagged and had his hands secured above his head to the bedframe. Harry's eyes were squeezed shut and tears ran down his face as he screamed into the gag in his mouth, the man forcing himself on the restrained teen viciously, muttering obscenities and terrible things as he thrashed underneath him. They knew now why the blood wards faded.

Lucius, though stoic on the outside, was deciding which unforgivable to lay on the fat beast before him. Death would be too easy, so he opted for the most fun. And he doubted that his dark lord would want him to kill this muggle.

"Crucio," he said softly, his wand blasting light that connected with the man, causing him to go stiff and fall to the side off Harry, who didn't seem to realize what was happening around him. He instead, curled up on himself, a large amount of blood underneath him.

Draco moved forward and undid the cotton tie (red with blue dots, who would wear something that ugly?) that was wrapped around his wrists and he just curled more into himself, pulling his hands around his ribs and breathing heavily and wheezing with each breath. Draco yanked another tie from around his head, and to his horror, realized it was Harry's Gryffindor tie. He coughed, and blood sprayed form his mouth when he did and he fell unconscious, breathing slowly returning to a somewhat normal speed, but still wheezing and becoming thready.

The fat man was still writhing and moaning on the floor when Lucius looked up releasing the curse. "How is he?"

Draco shook his head. "Father, he's losing blood, and coughing blood, and…he's messed up…I think he's dying, that's why the wards fell…"

Lucius knelt down beside the fat man who was glaring at him through one pudgy eye, panting heavily. "You disgusting Muggle. You should die. Painfully."

"You're another freak like him, you should all die," he muttered.

"Crucio," Lucius muttered softly, sending the man into writhing agony again. He didn't let up this time until he passed completely out. "Draco, can you gather him up? I'm going to find his wand and his things; he doesn't seem to have anything in this...room."

Draco stared at the bed, and found a threadbare blanket tossed to the side of it. He picked it up, leaning over and wrapped around him, and hefted his surprisingly light body up. He nearly staggered backward, expecting him to weigh much more than he did. School had only been out three weeks, how could he possibly have lost that much weight? He was quite proud of his own growth spurt over the last year, and he realized that Harry had had no such spurt, still far shorter and slighter than most the other boys their age. He headed down the stairs quietly, and found his father pulling a trunk from a cupboard and shrinking it to fit in his pocket.

"Come," his father said, and they left the house just in case there were tracing wards inside. Once outside, he took out a skeleton key and placed Harry's hand inside his and gripped it tightly, whispering the portkey command, "skeleton king" and they were tugged through space the sitting room of Malfoy Manor. Severus Snape sat on the divan reading the Daily Prophet when they appeared. The scent of blood brought his attention up sharply.

"Is that…" he began as he stood up to take the unconscious form. Blood was already dripping onto the floor from the bundled form in Draco's arms. "Get him to the potion lab, now. Lucius, transmute the bench to a bed, quickly, I'm hoping I have enough blood replacement potions…"

A few moments later saw Severus rifling through potion stores as he muttered to himself while Draco and Lucius got him settled in the newly transfigured bed. He looked over to the bloodied form.

"Can you clean the blood off him? I need to assess him, and I'm no mediwizard. Wash him, don't scourgify him, we don't know what kind of injuries he has yet," he said almost absently.

Draco summoned a house elf. "Water, rags, both warm and cold water, and sponges. Bring us some clean linens too, sheets, towels, and bandages." The elf popped away and a moment later popped back in with another elf bringing what had been asked.

Severus was busy spelling blood replacer into him, hoping that the ten vials he had was enough. A hundred wouldn't help if he couldn't staunch the bleeding, though. He couldn't tell yet where the blood was coming form. Draco was clearing away the blood around his face and chest, finding that underneath were multiple scars. This wasn't a one-time thing. This was systematic abuse.

Severus ran a diagnostic spell as they worked. "What happened to him…" he muttered, cringing as the spell spilled its results. "He's got a collapsed lung, three fractured ribs, five broken completely, his wrist is broken in two places, his shin is fractured, he has a concussion, his orbital bone is shattered…he's got internal bleeding, internal tearing, that's where the blood loss is stemming from…the internal bleeding is pretty severe, if you hadn't gotten there when you did…he wouldn't have seen morning."

He paused. "I'm going to stop the bleeding, inflate the lung, then the hard part comes in setting the bones…"

After two hours, Severus was ready to set the bones. Each set caused him even in unconsciousness to arch and cry out, though not as bad as if he were awake as the bones were set together and the potion was spelled into him to mend them. Finally, he stepped back, exhausted, having used all the blood replacers, and he was going to need more if the bleeding wasn't perfectly fixed.

"Draco, start working on some blood replacers, and pain potions. I'm going to need a little while before I can do anything else," he said sinking into a large chair. "Bind any other surface wounds, and are either of you going to tell me why you showed up with a bloody Harry Potter? And what in Merlin's name did this to him?"

Lucius sighed, finishing washing the boy and covering him with a blanket. Draco had gone to work on the potions already. "Draco came to me, saying he was worried about him, as you know the dark lord tasked him with watching him in the muggle world after he overheard the summer address this year. Perhaps you could just look for yourself, Severus? I'm too tired to detail this all. The exhaustion of not killing a muggle is greater than actually killing one."

Severus nodded and cast the spell and found himself awash in the memories of the night, first Draco's, and then the elder Malfoy. He pulled back as though shocked at the end. "Does Dumbledore know of this? He's letting him go to that? What would trigger this muggle to do such a thing…"

Severus had his own memories of talking to Dumbledore about the boy. Knowing that the boy was going to his death was bad enough, but the fact that he was having something like this done to him… He could only hope it was a one-time thing. But what Draco had seen gave him a different impression.

"Severus, he's got a lot of old scarring. I mean, a lot," Lucius said, looking over the now cleaned and bandaged body.

The potion master took a breath and went to look and saw the bruising of differing shades, and the older scars. He cast a diagnostic spell to look for old breaks in the bones and found more than a boy his age should have.

"How has this never come to Poppy's attention…" he muttered.

"What his uncle did tonight…was that the first time he did that? Or had it happened before?" Lucius asked quiet.

Severus stiffened as the diagnostic spell completed. "There's more than enough scarring to suggest that was nowhere near the first time."

"How did your mediwitch miss it?" the blond asked, starting to allow a scowl to furrow his pristine brow.

"She would have had to have a reason to look. He would have had to complain about stomach pain, bleeding, anything like that. As far as the bones, again, it wouldn't show on a regular diagnostic scan," he said, shaking his head. "Gods, he's had more bones broken, and most haven't healed correctly. It seems that he's led a life conducive to being manipulated."

Lucius frowned and looked over the boy to his friend. "What do you mean by that?"

"It is quite easy to manipulate someone who has never known kindness, or love, the first people to look on him with kindness would become the people he attached himself to, and those that offered what he needed most, affection and care, would have an easy time bending him to their will," he said, glancing down to the boy, tracing deep scars that were carved obviously with a knife into the flesh of his belly. "The question is whether the headmaster was involved in this directly, or simply was ignorant of what was happening. The boy was very good at hiding things when he wanted to be. Very Slytherin of him."

Lucius nodded. "I think he should stay here," he said, frowning slightly. "With us. It is obvious that he can't go back."

"You realize the dark lord will want him dead," he said, looking over the boy's slack face.

"Perhaps," Lucius said softly. "Perhaps not. He wants him to be removed from the war. What better way than to be placed in the care of the dark lord himself?"

Severus nodded. "Perhaps his death would not be necessary if he was not a part of the war. Harry doesn't need to be rushing off to his death, the child has obviously never had a childhood to begin with, then to be forced into a war like this…there is no fairness for this boy."

"I made the choice to bring him here; I'll go to the dark lord. He should know why. Have the pain potions ready when I return, I'm sure I'll have need of them if he's in a foul mood."

Lucius turned and left, leaving Severus alone with the boy. He sat on the bed beside him and studied the boy he had come to hate and love at the same time. He looked so much like his rival, James Potter. Until he opened Lily's eyes. Then the effect was lost on the older wizard. He sighed, patting his shoulder gently. Lily. He missed her more than he would ever say to anyone else. He still clung to her in his heart like no one else in his life. And here lay her son. Her only son, her flesh and blood, and Lily's sister…allowed it. The thought hit him hard. Her sister allowed it to happen in that house. Allowed her brute of a husband to do these things to him. He wondered then, perhaps she didn't know. But how could she not?

He knew he shouldn't, but he reached a hand and put it on the boy's head and whispered the spell that would bring him into the memories. He needed to know if Lily's sister had a part in this, or if she was innocent as he desperately hoped. He didn't want to hate her only sister.

He walked in a tilted world. There was a boy, a small boy he recognized as Harry, no more than four if a day. He was trying desperately to wash dishes but it was quite obvious he was far too young for such a task. A heavy hand slammed into the back of his head and he tumbled off the stool he stood on.

"Why aren't ya done, freak?" a younger, though equally fat, Vernon Dursley shouted at the cowering child.

"Uncle, I'm trying!" he said with a wavering voice.

"Vernon, you can't expect him to do all of that, he's never done it before…" Petunia's voice came from the entry.

"I can and he will. I tell him to do something and he'll do it. We didn't ask for the freak, we don't even want him, yet here he is. So he's going to pay his way. Or I'll beat him for not paying his way."

The timid woman backed away as her husband pulled a belt from his waist and proceeded to strip the boy and lay bright red stripes across him as he cried out and pleaded for him to stop.

The world spun sickly, and Severus was looking at an older boy, kneeling in the garden. Perhaps nine or ten, he was weeding and humming to himself. Severus didn't recognize the tune.

"Hi Harry," a voice from behind said.

He looked up and waved a grubby hand at the woman next door. "Hi Ms. Figg. How are you?"

"Good, Harry. Are you well?" she asked, smiling at him.

Harry shuddered for a moment then smiled and looked back. "Fine, Ms. Figg."

Severus realized he had a glamour over him. He squinted and realized the glamour hid the bruises on his face underneath. The boy was already doing wandless magic at an early age. There was a sound, and he looked up to see his uncle at the door staring at him. He scrambled unsteadily to his feet and followed into the house. Severus was pulled along with the child.

"Where'd the bruise I gave you go?" the man growled.

"I don't know," he whimpered, touching his face and grimacing. "It hurts, it's still there, I just…can't see it!"

"Then I guess I didn't hit you hard enough, boy, or you're using that freak stuff on it, either way," he said, his hand slamming into the boy's face, sending him sprawling, and blood streaming down his cheek.

He saw Petunia standing in the doorway, shaking her head and sighing. She turned and returned to the kitchen.

Again, an unsettling shift, and it was an older Harry, one he recognized, perhaps last summer. Harry was tied down to his bed, arms and legs stretched out as the man advanced on him with a knife.

"That freakish stuff is gonna stop, boy," he growled at him and used the knife to cut away the boy's oversized clothes. "That freak school isn't gonna help you here."

"No, stop, I didn't…" then he screamed as the blade bit into the flesh of his stomach, carving bloody letters deep into the flesh. When he was done, the boy had passed out, blood pooled on the bed around him, the letters making the rough word freak carved into the flesh below his belly button across his pelvis.

Severus couldn't take any more. He pulled away and saw the boy toss in his sleep. Was this really what they'd sent him to every year? What they had done to the child that was supposed to save them from the dark lord? Severus began to wonder if the dark lord was so bad. At least he didn't put on appearances of being kind and loving. At least he was honest. Severus wasn't sure he could say the same for the headmaster and the rest of the so called "light".